Tomasz Stanko New York Quartet - Wislawa (ECM 2013)

"Tomasz Stanko introduces a new and exciting quartet, in a double album full of strong themes, inspired playing, and improvisational daring. The album was recorded last June in New York, a city in which the great Polish trumpeter has become a familiar presence in the last decade. Five years ago he took an apartment there, and since then has been splitting his time between the US and Warsaw. New York has become a base for writing music, soaking up the city’s art scene, and monitoring developments in the music. At 70, Stanko has lost none of his willingness to take aboard new ideas, while also keeping the old ideas firmly in view. An innovator of European improvising, he has maintained a strong sense of jazz’s history and knows the importance of renewing contact to the music’s sources. “Originally, I wanted just to enjoy the city of New York, where jazz has been so important and which continues to be the most important jazz city in the world.
The city where Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Duke Ellington made great music, and where much great jazz history was made...” But it wasn’t long before he was interacting with local players, experimenting before settling on the line-up of his quartet. “In New York I found three fantastic cats,” he says of David Virelles, Thomas Morgan, and Gerald Cleaver." ecm